What is it about the Australian outback? For nearly two centuries, narratives of outback journeys have been suffused with the aura of death. Why? It is not just that the desert is big, dry, hot and apparently empty. The outback is Australia’s “mythological crucible,” and journeys there have become rites of passage. It is where settler Australians go to die and perhaps be reborn. This book explores the landscape of this evolving national mythology. It argues that a more conscious engagement with the process of symbolic death and rebirth is needed for Australians to enter into a deeper understanding of themselves and their relationship to the land and its Indigenous people.

This monograph uses the national pavilions of the Venice Biennale as a vehicle to examine the development of international contemporary art trends within the Asia-Pacific region, including Australia, Japan and Korea and 16 additional national entities who have had less continuous participation in this global art event. Analysing both the spatial and visual representation of contemporary art presented at the Venice Biennale and incorporating the politics behind national selections, this monograph provides insights into a range of important elements of the global art industry. Areas analysed include national cultural trends and strategies, the inversion of the peripheral to the centre stage of the Biennale, geopolitics in gaining exhibition space at the Venice Biennale, curatorial practices for contemporary art presentation and artistic trends that seek to deal with major economic, cultural, religious and environmental issues emerging from non-European art centres. This monograph will be of interest to scholars in art history, museum studies and Asia-Pacific cultural history.

Published on the occasion of the 2009 Venice Biennale, MADDESTMAXIMVS - PLANET & STARS SEQUENCE is a project book a and catalogue, documenting a new major body of work by Shaun Gladwell. The publication maps the project in its entirety. Commencing in 2007, MADDESTMAXIMVS has continued with a series of recorded performances and sculptures that investigate representations of landscape and the mythological figures that are projected into these spaces. The installation in the Australian Pavilion in Venice will consist of several projects that intersect each other through various locations and performances. Rather than picturing landscapes, Gladwell's project questions the very history and representation of these locations. Introduced with local references, the project offers international identification and relevance. Through performance, Gladwell re-imagines the Australian hinterland, negotiating the conventions of art history and traditional landscape painting. This meditative investigation articulates Gladwell's discursive approach to contemporary art and structures the project as a free, contemplative space. Roadkill kangaroos are found on the side of highways by a black leather clad motorcyclist and given a ritualistic burial, a figure surfs a vehicle as it moves through desert roads, a masked individual rapidly paints and subsequently erases images of the/a universe in open arid settings, and a group of figures spin against natural rock formations. With over one hundred colour plates and two in-depth texts - by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and Dr Blair French - MADDESTMAXIMVS - PLANET & STARS SEQUENCE is the first comprehensive publication of Shaun Gladwell's multi-dimensional practice.

Shaun Gladwell- Stereo Sequences has been conceived and created for ACMI's unique subterranean gallery and features a series of multi-screen video works that explore concepts of duality, parallels and mirroring.Using filmic devices such as long pans and slow-motion, Gladwell captures tightly choreographed, repetitive performances by classical ballerinas, helicopters, motorcycles, muscle cars, trials bike-riders and skateboarders. Gladwell's latest offerings radiate a distinct Australian sensibility, inspired by the unique landscape and local film culture, including Ozploitation era films.Many of the works are set in distinct Australian locations such as the Wollemi National Park, the open plains of Broken Hill and even Sydney's M5 underpass, each landscape a central character in the resulting work.ACMI Director, Mr Tony Sweeney, said today the centres largest single commission by an Australian artist, reflected Gladwell's growing international reputation.'Shaun Gladwell has an enviable international reputation as one of Australia's leading video artists and we are thrilled to be working with him on the creation of what is a stunning series of works,' he said. 'This significant new commission reflects our strong commitment to supporting Australian artists, both established and emerging, and the ongoing development of contemporary moving image art practice in this country.'

This book examines the interconnections between art, phenomenology, and cognitive studies. Contributors question the binary oppositions generally drawn between visuality and agency, sensing and thinking, phenomenal art and politics, phenomenology and structuralism, and subjective involvement and social belonging. Instead, they foreground the many ways that artists ask us to consider how we sense, think, and act in relation to a work of art.

Originated by Tomato, this work is closely related to the message and imagery of techno band Underworld's music, creating a typographic map of a journey through the streets of New York.

Current: Contemporary Art From Australia and New Zealand is the first comprehensive survey of all that is cutting edge in Australian and New Zealand contemporary practice. In a landmark publication, the book features eighty artists, carefully chosen to best reflect the vibrancy of art of the moment. While Current could be seen as a hot list of contemporary taste in the tradition of Taschen's Art Now, inclusivity is the book's abiding theme. Current is also underpinned by scholarship with commissioned essays by the region's leading writers and curators. Current's beautifully designed pages are filled with many names familiar to followers of contemporary art - including Paddy Bedford, Simryn Gill, Ah Xian, Tracey Moffatt, Shaun Gladwell and Del Kathryn Barton - along with some of the region's freshest new talents, such as Benjamin Armstrong, Monica Tichacek, Rohan Wealleans, Francis Upritchard and Sean Cordeiro & Claire Healy, whose photograph of the contents of a German apartment wrapped in orange twine graces the book's front cover. Current captures the unique essence of contemporary practice in Australia and New Zealand, charged with the dynamic between Indigenous, western and Asian cultures. The eighty selected artists encompass a diversity of culture and subject and employ every available medium, from painting, photography and performance to installation and video art. Current's contextual essays are written by leading authorities in their fields, including Robert Leonard, Victoria Lynn, Justin Paton, Rachel Kent, Nick Waterlow and Brenda L. Croft, who has convened an important roundtable of Indigenous curators to explore the question of the contemporary within Aboriginal art.

Mike Parr is Australia's most significant performance artist. His contribution to the development and establishment of performance art in Australia remains continuous and resolute. Parr's dedication and research into the boundaries of performance art within the parameters of art history and theory are unprecedented. At the forefront of performance art in Australia in 1970, Parr explored areas far removed from mainstream visual culture at the time. Despite the contempt, he persevered, remaining true to his practice. This long awaited book pays homage to Parr's achievements and is an essential admission into Australia's cultural memory. Compiled by the artist, this first hand account includes an extraordinary array of photographic documentation together with performance scripts and the artist's writings on his work, encapsulating the qualities that have made Mike Parr one of Australia's greatest cultural assets on the world stage. Parr has performed in Switzerland, France, Austria, Italy, USA, Japan, The Philippines, Sweden and throughout Australia since 1973.